SARADA RAUCH: It's a bag full of snakes and chocolates

NOVELLA is pleased to present "It's a bag full of snakes and chocolate", Sarada Rauch’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. Rauch will exhibit her new work of prints, mixed media and video.

Reinterpretation gives history more than one perspective. With this in mind, Rauch reinterprets traditional narratives using contemporary images to create new folklore. Her aim is to excavate the hidden histories within these narratives.

Rauch views her work as a version of oral tradition. In oral traditions, stories are kept alive by being re-told again and again, and change with each person orating them. The storyteller improvises a great deal of the narrative, reinterpreting the story and inserting their own perspective and imagery. The ability of a narrative to be reinterpreted gives it more than one perspective. This creates the possibility of having more than one perspective on the narratives we live with today.

The work in "It’s a bag full of snakes and chocolate" is a deliberation on revolution as a circle. For example in the piece "Mudra Owl: Tyranny and Adulation", Rauch considers the relationship between crowd identity, the origins of leadership, and the ability of this relationship to misdirect power. Her research into these subjects is referenced by endnotes, which are placed within the video, and collected in a book bound by the artist.

Everything in Rauch’s work is made by her own hand. Combining high and low technology, digital with the hand made, she makes static objects become animate. Rauch’s hand is always obvious in the work and calls attention to itself as a crafted piece in digital form. Her works acknowledge their own silliness and because of this they can also dabble with being genuine. Sarada Rauch is winking at you while telling you something heartfelt.